Page:The Parable of Creation.djvu/113

Rh the Lord's work upon the soul, we are in a strong sense of our own efforts to that end. So much so is this the case that our consciousness is, all the time, that it is our own work. At this stage of regeneration it necessarily must be so. And we also speak the language of self-conscious effort, because in that state a higher language would almost savor of hypocrisy. We feel, therefore, our good as our own effort, and not as that of the Lord in us, we being simply co-operators; and we recognize the truths we obtain as light gained by our own studies, and not as light shed down from a Divine source through the higher firmament of the mind.

This is one of the stages of our progress which cannot possibly be avoided. We may hear the higher idea preached and fully assent to it, and yet we will fail to realize it. We will grow into that. But it is not an exceedingly vivified state. The waters of truth may flow into the mind but the they are hardly living waters. Light may shed its radiance upon the firmament of the spiritual mind, but it is scarcely living light. The soul may be touched with the higher truth, and its affections may be stirred to reach forth for the higher life, but it cannot, in a proper sense, be called, as yet, a living soul.

Now in this parable of regeneration, the lower state I have thus delineated is described by the